A reading guide to comics and books

Tag: Horror

I was watching the new Midnight, Texas TV show, an NBC adaptation of a Charlaine Harris series and I thought that I’d never finished the Sookie Stackhouse one. That’s when I realized it was much longer than I thought and it seems that a reading order is necessary.

What is the Sookie Stackhouse series?

Also known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries or The True Blood Novels, The Sookie Stackhouse Novels is a series written by Charlaine Harris. It’s about Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress who is also a telepath. She lives in the town of Bon Temps in northwestern Louisiana.

Vampires and other supernatural creatures are a reality in Sookie’s world. In fact, since the invention of synthetic blood (called Tru Blood), vampires came out and live now peacefully with humans for sustenance.

One day, Sookie finally meets a vampire, a Civil War veteran named Bill Compton. That’s the beginning of their complicated relationship.

Charlie Stross just published a new novel set in his successful Laundy Files series. It’s the perfect moment to do a reading order for the series.

What are The Laundry Files?

So, The Laundry Files is a series of science fiction spy thrillers written by British writer Charles Stross. The story is about Bob Howard, an I.T. consultant who is now afield agent for the British government agency known as The Laundry.

This organization deals with occult threats (with a Lovecraftian influence) and is set in a world where a computer and mathematical equations are just used for calling up other dimensions.

There’s no need for a Revival Reading Order, but before this comic book series, Tim Seeley wrote Hack/Slash and that one really needs one. So, let’s go.

What’s Hack/Slash?

First things first, an introduction. Hack/Slash is a horror/action comic book about Cassie Hack who is the lone survivor of an attack by a monster or, if you prefer, a slasher. Hunted, she became the hunter and the world with Vlad, her enigmatic partner and friend, Vlad. Together, they hunt down slashers.

I’ve read that there will be a TV Show based on Anne Rice’s novels, The Vampire Chronicles series. Since the first Interview with the Vampire adaptation, there are talks about doing more movies and some novels did get bad big-screen versions. Now, we are talking about television, there’s a long way to go before the project become something real. Nevertheless, I thought that it may be the right time to read more than the first book of the series (I never got the courage to do so sooner). So I did some research to build a reading order and this is what I found, if you have some modification to suggest, you are welcome to do so in the commentary section of course. But first…

What are The Vampire Chronicles?

The story of The Vampire Chronicles is about Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century. Also known as The Brat Prince, Lestast is an antihero at the beginning, but he doesn’t see himself as monstrous as people might have described him.

The series chronicles the adventures of Lestat and other characters he influenced or just met. Some books are mainly about other vampires, but Lestat is the heart of the series.

As I was saying in the first blog entry post, one of my objectives is to write some huge reading orders and update them regularly because, when I start reading Hellboy, I didn’t find this kind of guide up-to-date. It was a bit disappointing for a number of reasons. The first one is that there are always new comics in this wonderful universe that are coming out every month. Even now that the regular Hellboy series has ended.

The big challenge, as every reader knows, is that there’s more than one way to go with the Mignolaverse. I’ll try to do my best to be clear, but there will always be some difficult choices to make here and there. But first…

What are Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and that Mignolaverse?

Hellboy is a character created by Mike Mignola who made his first appearance during the ’90s. He is basically a big red Demon with the Right Hand of Doom summoned from Hell to Earth by Nazi occultists. Instead of falling into the wrong hands, he was discovered by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm and the Allied forces. The good professor adopted Hellboy and formed the United States Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD). Even after the end of the war, the bureau fought against dark forces.

Hellboy grew up, became a BPRD agent and worked with others, not like him, but with special talents and more like the ‘fishman’ Abe Sapien and the firestarter Liz Sherman.

Some series doesn’t require a reading order. It’s mostly the case with Locke and Key. I should say that it was mostly the case, because Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez recently produced a prequel story with the promise that there will be more soon.

I decided to start now, because why wait? I’ll update this reading order with each new addition to the series.

What is Locke and Key about?

Locke and Key is a comic book series written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez. The main story is about the Locke family, present day. After the murder of their father, Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode Locke move with their mother Nina to the family estate of Keyhouse, located in Lovecraft, Massachusetts. The young Bode soon uncovers The Ghost Door which separates his spirit from his body. With his brother and sister they begin discovering more secrets and the keys that open more than doors. Each key brings a lot of possibilities and problems, but the real danger is outside with those who want the keys for themselves.

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